Rainbow brainwaves: This is your brain, captured in colour

This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired
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This is your brain,
captured in colour. The luminous shapes are a computer simulation
of pyramidal neurons -- cells found in your cerebral
cortex which play a critical role in memory recall, sensation
and movement. "The shape of a neuron is like a signature of its
particular neuronal type," says Michael Hausser, director of the
neural computation lab at the Wolfson Institute
for Biomedical Research at UCL.

The shape of the neurons can be
simulated by an algorithm: the three variables are the density of
the dendrites (the branches); the energy needed to produce
dendrites; and the time it takes for an electric signal to pass
along a dendrite. "People have been trying to generate synthetic
morphologies for years," says Hausser. "Ours is probably the
closest approximation yet. Our algorithm can help groups who
are trying to build whole brains to populate their networks with
realistic neurons."